The former Islanders goaltender and ESPN New York radio talk show host responded to Francesa’s verbal tongue-lashing with a few cheap shots of his own Wednesday as a guest on “The Michael Kay Show,” after missing his own show because of a doctor’s appointment.

On Tuesday, Francesa called DiPietro a “stooge” and said, “Tackling me in the radio business, you’re you, and I’m Gordie Howe, so clam up.”

“You set me up. It’s like an alley-oop. I got to bury it,” DiPietro said.

He later added: “There’s plenty of cards I could’ve played. I could’ve played the ‘I actually made my varsity baseball team’ card, but I didn’t play that one.”

The beef goes back to Francesa ripping the Islanders, calling them a “third-rate organization,” and DiPietro referring to Francesa as “fatso” as he defended his old team.

“I was just standing up for my team,” the former goalie said. “To sit there and call the New York Islanders a third-rate organization when you don’t really follow hockey, that hurts my soul. And it’s not because they’re paying me. That hurts because guys on that team are my friends. Regardless if I’m on the team or not on the team, if they pay me, they don’t pay me, I’ll always be an Islander, I’ll always root for the Islanders, and I’ll take offense when people go after them.”

Looking back, DiPietro seemed to have fun with it.

“I look like the one who’s winning, though, right?” he asked Kay. “He took three or four minutes out of his show to talk about me. I guess it’s the Terrell Owens model: Any publicity is good publicity.”